Monthly Archives: May 2009
AT the minimum 20,000 Tamil people were massacred on the Mullaitivu beach ‘no fire zone’ by Sri Lanka Army shelling, in the first 19 days of May. As this was happening, the Sri Lankan government was issuing denial after denial that anything of the sort was happening. However, what was...
TAMILNET reports that evidence gathered by The Times newspaper has revealed that at least 20,000 Tamil people were killed on the Mullaitivu beach by Sri Lanka Army shelling. Aerial photographs, official documents, witness accounts and expert testimony collected by the newspaper ‘present clear evidence of an atrocity that comes...
Talks between German government ministers and GM and US government representatives are resuming in Berlin today to decide who will take over GM Europe. The US parent has been ‘nationalised’, with the US government taking 72 per cent ownership, with the UAW union trust fund taking an 18 per...
NEXT MONDAY June 1 GM will seek Section 11 Bankruptcy, cutting off GM Europe with less cash than is required to see the week out. GM in the US is now being prepared for administration and restructuring with the Obama administration committed to a 70 per cent share in the...
TamilNet reports that residents of Jaffna peninsula are experiencing an acute shortage of essential food commodities including wheat flour and sugar, sources in Jaffna said. Jaffna Government Agent (GA), in a press release Tuesday night, said that arrangements are being made to get down wheat flour from Trincomalee and sugar...
‘I totally support the call to occupy GM Luton to defend jobs’, former Vauxhall Luton TGWU convenor, Arthur Lynn told News Line yesterday. He was speaking as the German government, put off its decision on which bidder it would accept to take over GM Europe. Whichever bidder pledges to keep...
IMPACT trade union’s civil service conference has passed an emergency motion on the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse – the Ryan Commission. Delegates in Portlaoise last Thursday urged the Irish government to immediately implement the recommendations of the Ryan Commission. Moving the motion, Tom Ryder, Vice...
THE government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) announced yesterday that it would ‘no longer be bound’ by the armistice that brought fighting in the Korean War to an end in 1953 and that ‘the Korean peninsula will go back to a state of war’. This followed...
NEARLY half of all employers (45 per cent) will not be offering jobs to 16-year-old school-leavers and graduates this year. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) conducted a survey of 500 firms and found that over 80 per cent of these employers will not be taking on 16-year-olds...
‘These grim figures show that unemployment is still a national emergency in this country,’ a TUC spokesman told News Line. He was responding to research which showed a huge rise in youth jobless, with employers saying they have no intention of recruiting 16-year-olds. He added: ‘The government must make it a...
The Israeli cabinet is to ban Palestinians from marking the Nakba, (the Catastrophe) of the 1948 creation of Israel. A draft law is up for parliamentary approval next week and will propose punishment of up to three years in prison for breaches of the prohibition, an official said on condition...
WORLD BANK chief Robert Zoellick has warned that the global economic crisis could lead to serious social upheavals. The head of the World Bank has warned of the destabilising effects of mass unemployment. ‘If we do not take measures, there is a risk of a serious human and social crisis with...
THE News Line salutes the heroic self-sacrifice of the Tamil Tigers and the Tamil people as a whole. They have fought and are fighting not just the Rajapakse regime, but the imperialist powers behind it, the US and UK governments that refused to go beyond words to deeds to stop...
LTTE’s Department of International Relations on Sunday announced that the LTTE Leader Velupillai Prabakharan attained martyrdom fighting the military oppression of the Sri Lankan state on 17 May. However, the LTTE’s Department for Diaspora Affairs (DDA) told TamilNet that it would not comment without explicit authorisation from the LTTE...
Fears of job losses and plant closures at car maker Vauxhall grew at the weekend as three firms vied to buy GM Europe, ahead of a June 1 deadline to reach an agreement. Those in the running are Italy’s Fiat, Austrian-Canadian auto parts supplier Magna International and European buyout firm...
THAT an ex-SAS officer from the 1970s, with current military-police commissioner connections through his succession of security businesses, as well as ‘strong connections to senior Conservatives’, should have been chosen to deliver confidential information concerning the fraudulent practices of MPs to the Daily Telegraph (allegedly in return for £100,000)...
Over 600 lecturers, college staff and their supporters marched through north London on Saturday in defence of education.Over 600 lecturers, college staff and their supporters marched through north London on Saturday in defence of education. The march set off from Highbury Fields to a rally in Archway. The march was led...
BRITISH Airways has just announced a loss before tax of £401m for the year to 31 March, a collapse from a profit of £922m for the previous year. Chief executive Walsh blamed the collapsing pound and higher fuel costs for the disaster and said that he saw ‘no signs of...
TAMILNET reports that gangs of Sinhala youths brandishing Lion flags in the name of victory against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), have been on the rampage, day and night, intimidating and harassing Tamil civilians in Colombo and its suburbs for four days running. Affected Tamil residents have...
IN a hard-hitting personal reflection, Irish Political Journalist and National Union of Journalists member JOHN COULTER vehemently defends the right of reporters to withhold from the police the identities of their confidential sources. If you can’t keep your gob shut about your sources, never, never, NEVER become a journalist. And sod...
THREE companies have bid to take over GM Europe from the crisis-stricken US giant. They are Italian carmaker Fiat, Canadian parts maker Magna and US investment firm RHJ International. GM will have the final say. However the German government will play the key roll in bankrolling the purchaser. It...
Business Secretary Mandelson told the BBC yesterday that there will be ‘painful change’ resulting from the takeover of GM Europe. He said that whichever of the three bidders for GM Europe, which owns Vauxhall and Opel, takes over, this would be inevitable. ‘Whoever comes out as the successful bidder will cut...
Supported by the IUF-affiliated National Federation of Food, Beverage and Tobacco Workers of Pakistan, over 700 contract agency workers at Unilever’s last directly-owned and operated Lipton tea factory in Pakistan are stepping up their campaign for permanent job status. The workers will be launching a series of national and local...
THE crisis in Palestine and the crisis in the Middle East is deepening rapidly to the point where its contradictions are sharpening to the point where they have to be resolved. Currently the new Israeli Premier Netanyahu, is in Washington discussing with President Obama, and his Secretary if State Mrs...
HEZBOLLAH Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah last Monday, speaking in a live address broadcast on Al-Manar TV, discussed the implications of the current Israeli military manoeuvres. He said: ‘This is a fundamental and sensitive issue that requires some illustration in details. First, what is this manoeuvre and what are the...
‘Tamil Tigers Lift the Banner! Tamil Tigers Lift the Banner!’ This is what young Tamil workers chanted having just prevented the police from pulling down their flag. Three police officers tried to humiliate the Tamils by forcibly grabbing their flag which had been lifted by a large...
Thousands of construction workers around the UK have walked out in support of 200 workers who began a wildcat strike on Tuesday at the South Hook LNG (liquefied natural gas) terminal in Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire. The unofficial action at Milford Haven is over the use of foreign labour above local...
WHILE rejecting Colombo’s claim of the killing of LTTE leader V Prabakaran and assuring his safety and well-being, LTTE’s International Relations Head S Pathmanathan on Tuesday accused Colombo of treachery in the killing of the political wing leaders B Nadesan and S Puleedevan. Mr Pathmanathan said it is...
ONE THOUSAND Tamil protesters congregated in Westminster Square yesterday afternoon, in defiance of Monday night’s violent Metropolitan Police attack on them in which at least 11 demonstrators were injured and ten arrested. Karuna told News Line: ‘I was here when the police attacked us on Monday night. There were several...
CORRUPTION and parliaments are inseparable. Oliver Cromwell made this clear when he shutdown the Rump Parliament, reciting as he did the vices of the various MPs. His dispersal of the rump and other parliaments was revolutionary since he was interested in cementing the bourgeois revolution and making it irreversible in...
OVER 100 trade unionists, workers and youth attended the News Line – All Trades Unions Alliance meeting in Red Lion Square in Central London on Sunday afternoon. ASLEF branch officer and North East London Council of Action secretary Bill Rogers opened the meeting saying: ‘The situation has qualitatively changed......
TAMILNET reports that in the early hours of Monday at around 3.00am. Vanni local time, the LTTE Political Chief B Nadesan and LTTE Peace Secretariat Director S Puleedevan telephoned their contacts in Europe. They informed them to tell the ICRC (Red Cross) Head Office that only around 1,000 wounded cadres,...
YESTERDAY the imperialist-backed Rajapakse regime was claiming to have killed the LTTE leadership, including Velupillai Prabakaran, and that the struggle is now over. Its claims about the deaths of the Tamil leaders remain to be proven. However even if they are true, this barbarous regime will never be able...
SELVERASA Pathmanathan, head of the Tamil Tigers International Diplomatic Relations, issued an urgent statement on Sunday morning. He said: ‘Despite our plea to the world to save the thousands of people in Vanni from the clutches of death, the silence of the international community has only encouraged the Sri...
GENERAL Motors is about to end its ‘honeymoon’ relations with the US motor workers’ trade union, the UAW. Up till now the UAW leaders have agreed to slash and cut wages, and health and pension benefits to assist General Motors in keeping motor car production in the United States. However,...
AROUND 5,000 people marched from the University of London Union (ULU) to Trafalgar Square in central London on Saturday, to mark the 61st anniversary of Nakba Day – the Palestinian ‘catastrophe’. There were demonstrations all over the world against the setting up of the state of Israel on Palestinian land. A...
‘WE’VE been shafted,’ ex-Visteon Enfield Unite branch chairman Steve Parenti told News Line yesterday. He explained that sacked workers on Ford Mirror Contracts, which were agreed when Ford spun off Visteon in 2000, had finally received a payoff of £40,000-£50,000. However workers who subsequently joined Visteon Enfield plant on Cost Competitive...
WHILE workers today are marching in Birmingham to defend their jobs, their leaders are marching along with Lord Digby Jones, the Tory ex-CBI chief and ex-Brown Industry Minister for something else. In the Morning Star of May 14th, Simpson and Woodley declared ‘Measures we want to see taken include subsidised...
PRESIDENT Obama said one thing before his election, and now he is saying something else altogether. During his campaign he stood up against the torture of those accused of being Taleban or Al Qaeda members, and said that such methods would be exposed where they had happened. He also pledged...
US President Barack Obama has warned Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu against surprising the US with a military attack on Iran. A senior US official met with Netanyahu in Israel and conveyed Obama’s message. Earlier, Netanyahu’s envoy had visited Washington and met with National Security Adviser James Jones and with Secretary...